In an exclusive interview, the EU's antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, told EURACTIV.com that the US social network Facebook is on her radar screen but not the e-commerce giant Amazon, which is also suspected of abusing its dominant position.

Facebook users “need to know what happened with their data” following reports over a week ago that millions of profiles on the social media platform were secretly used to help political campaigns, EU Digital Commissioner Mariya Gabriel said.

EU regulators have forced tech giants to comply with the bloc's strict data protection rules. But when Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin took over as top EU privacy watchdog in 2014, she said the mostly American companies were ignorant about Europe’s strict standards and thought "the world is uniform".

The election of Donald Trump in the United States, helped by the far-right opinion news site Breitbart, is not a one-off event, says Victor Fleurot, a communication expert and self-proclaimed "visual activist", in an interview with Euractiv.com.

People who own smartphones check their phones 150 times a day, Elisabeth Linder told EURACTIV in an interview, adding that this is a huge opportunity for politicians to reach out to people and get them engaged in politics.

Silicon Valley is a concept that is hard to replicate, so Europeans should instead strive to build ecosystems for innovation that rely on investment, talent, leadership and risk, high-tech guru David Parekh tells EURACTIV.